Nigerian soldiers have killed five gunmen believed to belong to the Islamist group Boko Haram while losing a soldier and a policeman during a gunbattle in the country's volatile northeast, the military said on Thursday.

Lt. Col. Sagir Musa, the military spokesman in Maiduguri, the hotbed of the Boko Haram's insurgency, said the gunmen had attacked the troops at Marte on Wednesday.

Heavily armed gunmen killed four people in an attack Thursday that burnt a police station and a government building in a northeastern Nigerian town, police said.

The gunmen attacked the police station in the town of Song near the border with Cameroon and engaged soldiers and police officers in a shootout, police spokesman Mohammed Ibrahim told AFP.

Attackers have stormed a church service in a town in Nigeria's volatile northeast and killed 15 people in the latest such violence targeting Christians in recent days, an official said Monday.

News of the killings emerged after Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan questioned whether deadly Islamist attacks on churches in his country and other violence worldwide could be signs of coming "end times".

Suspected Islamist extremists have killed 15 Christians by slitting their throats in an attack on a village in Nigeria's volatile northeast, residents and a relief source said Sunday.

The gruesome violence was the latest to be blamed on Islamist extremist group Boko Haram, though this Christmas season has been notably less bloody than in 2011, when attacks on churches and other locations left scores dead.

Nigerian soldiers killed four suspected extremists and lost one policeman in the latest crackdown on the Islamist Boko Haram group in the country's restive northeast, the military said on Sunday.

Lieutenant Lazarus Eli, spokesman for the Joint Task Force (JTF) in Damaturu, the capital of Yobe State, said in a statement that the operation was carried out on Saturday in an area of the city of Potiskum that is a hotbed of the Boko Haram extremists.

Gunmen suspected of belonging to the Boko Haram Islamist group have killed seven people in separate attacks in Nigeria's volatile north, the police and army said Saturday.

In the first attack on Friday, gunmen opened fire and threw explosives at several targets including a police station, a prison and government offices in Maiha, a northeastern town along the border with Cameroon, leaving two dead, police said.

Nigerian troops killed five suspected Islamists and recovered arms and explosives in a raid in the restive northern city of Kaduna, the military said Friday.

Army spokesman in Kaduna Colonel Sani Usman said two suspected Boko Haram members were also wounded during the operation, a raid on a bomb-making factory in Rigasa area of the city on Thursday.

Fire that tore through a district of Nigeria's largest city after an explosion at a fireworks warehouse destroyed 10 buildings in addition to killing one person and wounding 40, an official said Thursday.

Firefighters meanwhile worked to douse the remains of the fire that began Wednesday morning in Lagos, and government officials pledged to investigate, saying storage of the fireworks in the crowded neighborhood was illegal.

Fire ripped through a crowded neighborhood in Nigeria's largest city on Wednesday and wounded at least 30 people after a huge explosion rocked a building believed to be storing fireworks, officials said.

The blast and fire led to panic in the densely packed area of Lagos, a city of some 15 million people, with residents jumping from windows to flee and others salvaging goods from their shops in the neighborhood’s large market.

Gunmen attacked a church in northern Nigeria during a midnight mass on Christmas Eve, killing six people including the pastor, before setting the building ablaze, residents and police said Tuesday.

"A group of gunmen came into the village at midnight and went straight to the church," said Usman Mansir, a resident of Peri village near Potiskum, the economic capital of Yobe state.